Call Down Thunder Read online

  Tomas gave a smoky laugh. ‘They comin’? Sound like a day of judgement. Sound like them riders – Rella, what they call them – you got more Bible ’n me – them Calypso riders?’

  ‘They’s them.’ The two of them chuckled. Reve wished he’d kept his mouth shut.

  The sun was sinking low and the breeze had all but died away. Down along the backs of the houses and shacks more fires were being lit, families gathering, figures moving to and fro, a mother calling, a child crying, tinny music.

  Tomas topped up the tin mug he used for his rum drinking. ‘I hear Calde sniffing in the city, looking for new business. Hear that he . . .’ Tomas paused, looking for the word. He liked to find himself fancy words that only someone else like Clever Theon might use. ‘Hear that he liaising with a new señor up there. Maybe that we get a visit from the Night Man. Maybe your sister hear something too.’

  ‘She hear voices,’ said Reve abruptly, standing up. ‘Tha’s what she hear. Time you start thinkin about her different. She need help. She don’ need your suspicioning.’ Sometimes Reve wanted to shake him out of his hammock ways. He turned to Arella. ‘Arella, you gonna eat with us? A little fish stew?’ It was a formality. Arella always ate with them.

  ‘Jackfish stew’d be fine.’ She smiled in Reve’s direction.

  Round the back was a standpipe with a bucket hooked over the tap, a brick fire with a black iron grill sitting on the top. Reve set the fire, took down the bag of vegetables Tomas kept hooked up from the ceiling, put on a pail of water to boil and set to work, peeling and cutting. Sultan collapsed beside him, and though he pretended not to be interested, he kept an eye on the fish, in case a piece happened to fall down by his nose.

  Reve let the pail with the vegetables simmer a little while and then he chunked up the fish and threw it all in. It would make a good thick stew.

  A little later LoJo called by and the two of them went down to the shore and hauled the skiff well above the tideline.

  By the time Reve returned, it was full dark and the stew was ready. Both Tomas and Arella were so unsteady from their drinking that they kept tipping one way then the other, almost like they were at sea. One time Tomas had seemed so big to him, but the rum and the days doing nothing had rusted him up a little. Now he made Reve think of one of those old steamers going slowly up the coast, beating against the waves.

  Their talk drifted to and fro, sometimes Bible, sometimes remembering old times.

  Reve sat the other side of the fire, watching them and thinking. Mi’s storm: he didn’t feel it in the air but he felt it all the same. It was coming. It wouldn’t sweep away boats and roofs, so he and LoJo had wasted their time sweating the skiff up so far, but it was going to come down on her. Poor Mi.

  ‘Did my mother look like Mi?’ he asked, cutting in on their talk, startling Arella.

  Tomas was trying to roll another cigarette but not managing so well. Reve got up, took the paper and tobacco and made the smoke for him. ‘That girl!’ Tomas slurred. ‘All a time she keep so far away from me. Only see her way down the beach, walking fast. Skinny. Some storm come and it’ll blow her away.’

  Reve almost flinched because it was so close to what he was thinking and was more true than Tomas in his hazy state realized, but what he said to Tomas was, ‘You know what she look like; you just not sayin. Come on, give me straight talk here.’

  ‘All right,’ he said after a long pause, ‘she look every bit like her mother.’ His hoarse voice softened. ‘Every bit. Her hair, her eyes, her way of lookin you in the eye . . .’

  Then Arella joined in, and as the two of them talked Reve felt his gone-away parents were like ghosts drifting closer in to the edge of the firelight.

  ‘Her people came from up the coast,’ Arella said. ‘Found her way here when she was ’bout your age. Heartstealer, eh. Always. I had eyes then and could see you well enough, Tomas, trailing along with boys half your age, and you and Theon lording the village then, with Calde just a runaround for you two. Times a lot different . . . Then she picked your father, Reve. Good-lookin, but weaker ’n a kitten when it came to her. I think she only picked him to give herself some peace. That was how it was: she was queen of the village. And then –’ she tipped up her glass and drained the last of her rum – ‘queen of nothin.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Hey, Rella,’ said Tomas, ‘he dead. They all gone. Tha’s enough.’

  ‘No,’ said Reve. ‘What did you mean, queen of nothing?’

  ‘All right.’ She held out her glass but Tomas didn’t refill it. She shrugged. ‘It was like this. Your father was not enough for her. I think – you know what I think? – I think she wanted different from this place. You remember how we all call her, Tomas? Call her Santa Fe because she talk ’bout America all the time.’ She stopped. ‘Your daddy wasn’t any good, Reve. That’s the truth. And you know, my husband wasn’t any good. Men aren’t any good. My husband walk out and leave me when my eyes gone dark, and I would have killed him if I could. Isn’t that right, Tomas?’ Tomas grunted. ‘And tha’s what I think. I think she killed him because he wasn’t smart enough for her. Became queen of nothing, poor girl, eh.’

  Tomas roused himself. ‘You full of sour wind, Rella. You don’t know what she done!’

  But it was what the police must have believed, thought Reve, arresting her and taking her away. Was that why Tomas and Uncle Theon both shied away from saying exactly what it was that had happened? They didn’t want Reve or Mi to know what a bad thing their mother had done? Funny how the thought didn’t shake him, not really. It would stir Mi, though, if she heard people saying that their mother was a murderer. Tip her into a black hole.

  ‘Still soft on her, eh, Tomas,’ chided Arella.

  ‘Soft on nothing,’ he said, his voice had a sticky rum slur on it.

  ‘An’ her hair was red,’ said Arella, suddenly speaking up again, ‘just like you see in the sky at times, when the sun’s going down and a storm’s coming, like the red you gonna see in Tomas’s eyes tomorrow, hey.’ She nodded at Tomas but he gave no response. His head had tipped forward, and whatever colour his eyes would be in the morning, they were closed now. Arella fell silent, though she was awake; her eyes were open and staring towards the heat of the fire.

  Reve touched Arella’s arm and then helped her to her feet. He walked her back across the track to her shack. ‘You want me take you in?’

  ‘No, no. You a good boy, Reve. A good boy.’

  ‘You won’t ever say that about my mother to Mi, will you?’

  She blinked. ‘No. No, I should hold my tongue, eh. Rum slides up your thinkin sometime. Don’t you ever touch it, Reve. Now, you go look out for Tomas. He gonna tip an’ fall in the fire one time, you don’t mind him.’ She pulled herself up the two steps to her porch and then went into the darkness of her room, closing the door behind her as Reve turned away. She never let him in the shack. He sometimes wondered if she had some secret hidden away in there.

  He crossed the track and, hooking his hands under Tomas’s arms, he managed to get him up from the steps and then steered him to his bed.

  ‘Was Arella right in what she was saying?’ he asked Tomas.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘She had no business sayin that.’ He laid his head back on his pillow and closed his eyes.

  He wasn’t asleep though. Reve knew that because he wasn’t snoring. He just wasn’t going to say anything else. Reve turned down the lamp and went outside.

  It was midnight when Reve crawled to his pallet under the shack. He ached with tiredness, but he still went through his ritual of lighting a candle and then digging up the jar he kept his money in, and counting it out. He put a few cents in every time he sold fish, every time Theon gave him money.

  Twelve dollars. It was not very much for all the work he did and all the fish he brought in. How many years would it take for him to earn enough to keep her safe?

  He screwed the top back on and laid the jar in its sandy hole. Then he snu
ffed out the candle, lay back and stared out at a strip of sky that was black and pricked with stars, and thought about Mi, probably sitting up on the roof of the old car, making her plans, her mind fizzing like one of Theon’s fruit soda drinks.

  Reve turned on his back. Then a moment later rolled on to his side again. Sultan growled in his sleep. As soon as Reve closed his eyes there was the woman drifting in the sea, her face turned up to him, and Mi telling him they had to go looking; and Mi’s hands were all shaky; and he didn’t want Mi getting so agitated she’d fall into a fit of juddering and never come out of it. He needed to be steady with Mi, all the time, give her no frights.

  He put his hand out to touch Sultan.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Reve woke suddenly, convinced that his mother was a murderer and she was walking down the main track looking for Mi and him so she could kill them both. His heart was banging against his ribs he was so frightened. Then Sultan stirred and it was all right.

  It was just a little before dawn. There was no breeze, nothing moving, no sounds, not even the hush of the sea. Everything was still and so warm and heavy he felt he could hardly breathe.

  He rolled off his pallet, crawled out into the yard and splashed water on his face. Then tucked his whole head down under the tap and let it run. Stupid. He blamed Arella and the rum she’d drunk.

  He pulled on his T-shirt and jeans, and then as the dawn came up he jogged to Theon’s cantina, tidied the place, did his chores, put on a kettle to make coffee for his uncle and then went out on the front step to see if an offshore breeze had picked up. It hadn’t. There would be no sailing skiffs out this morning.

  He didn’t like to visit Mi first thing; she could be worse than scrub thorn but he’d go anyway. Everyone saying she should move out of that car, thinking that if she did that she would move back into the village; but she wouldn’t ever do that. Instead she would suddenly up and go, that’s what she would do; and he wasn’t going to let that happen. She wasn’t going anywhere without him, no matter how scratchy she got.

  Theon came down, talking quietly on his cellphone. He nodded at Reve, said something else into his phone and then ended the call. He fixed coffee and asked Reve to check the hog pen, make sure there was water. Uncle Theon looked after his pigs better than most people. When Reve came back inside, Tomas was at the door talking to Theon. His eyes were red-rimmed and his face stubbled with grey iron filings. It was unusual to see him up in the village at this time of the day.

  When Reve asked him what he was doing, Tomas said, ‘You wanted me to see Calde. Tha’s what I’m doin. Tell him he can put a dog lead on that boy of his.’

  ‘You want me to come with you?’

  ‘I don’t need minding.’

  ‘Don’t go startin a war,’ said Theon.

  ‘Reckon I still know how to handle myself,’ he said, setting off again.

  ‘I wonder if he does,’ said Theon, more to himself than to Reve, but when he saw the boy looking at him he added, ‘Long time since Tomas worked. One time he could have stood up against anyone in Rinconda . . .’ He shook his head.

  ‘You think there’ll be trouble.’

  ‘There’s always trouble,’ said Theon, ‘but I wouldn’t fret about him. You mind your sister.’

  He did. He took the opposite path to Tomas and within a minute LoJo had fallen in beside him.

  ‘What happen you?’ said LoJo. ‘You hurryin all the time. I seen you go up; I see you go down. Even see Tomas. See him out of his hammock’s a miracle, tha’s what my daddy says.’

  Reve didn’t answer.

  ‘You goin fishin?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You take me out in your skiff.’

  ‘Maybe later.’

  ‘You turn a thinkin man all a sudden, Reve. I mean, you never spin a lot a talk, but you clam tight now.’

  ‘Mi’s got troubles, Lo.’

  They parted with LoJo promising to check the skiff; if a breeze picked up he would carry the sail and net down from the wall.

  Mi was sitting up on the roof of the old Beetle, holding up a green glass bottle, tilting it this way and that to catch the sun. ‘I wait up all the night,’ she said, before he could even greet her, ‘but she don’t come to me; I don’t hear her voice. You know who I’m talkin ’bout, I’m talkin ’bout our mother. You understan’? The woman you dream up? Botherin me all the time now that she only come to you.’ She was cross.

  ‘I don’t think she’s livin, Mi.’

  ‘Don’t matter what a boy think.’

  She was wearing a blue T-shirt – it looked new, maybe a gift – a clean skirt, so faded that the blue in it was just a memory, and a necklace of shells. He wondered if she had made it herself; he didn’t think it likely.

  ‘You expectin company?’ he asked.

  ‘Who tell you that?’ she said, giving him a sharp look.

  ‘No one tell me anything, Mi,’ he said.

  ‘Cos you don’t listen.’

  ‘You dressed up cos you’re goin some place?’

  He stepped around the side of the car and opened the door. Sure enough she had a jute bag all packed up with her things. ‘Are you runnin out, Mi?’

  ‘No.’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t know.’ The anger was gone. If anything, she sounded a little distressed.

  ‘You don’t go anywhere without me. You promise on that,’ he said. He took the green bottle out of her hand and made her look at him.

  ‘All right.’ She looked sad. ‘Why don’ you go do your fishing now? Tha’s what you so good at.’

  ‘There’s no wind.’ But the odd thing was that even as he replied, the acacia tree stirred and a light offshore breeze started. ‘I don’t know how you do that,’ he said.

  ‘Do what?’ She had her head tilted back to catch the full warmth of the morning sun. Her eyes were closed.

  He left her, met up with LoJo and the two of them launched the skiff.

  They fished all day, other skiffs passing them from time to time, and he let LoJo take the tiller and handle the net. He was good, and best of all he talked a little less when he was on board. By the end of the day they had more than a dozen fish slapping and flapping in the belly of the skiff, all of them stacked neat into the red box.

  The breeze shifted round, as it always did, and with the mainsail out wide like a one-wing bird, and Sultan, his paws up on the gunwale, barking at any gull drifting close enough to eye their catch, they ran in towards the shore.

  Reve could see two figures up by the acacia tree. One of them had to be Mi; he couldn’t tell who the other was, not the boys though. They only came in packs.

  ‘She got trouble again?’ said LoJo.

  ‘I don’ know.’

  They beached the skiff, rolled up the sail and set the anchor. LoJo took the fish box up to the cold store, and Reve, his forefinger hooked into the gill of a blue fish, walked over towards Mi’s place. He would collect the net later. Sultan, his tail waving like a ragged old sail, trotted ahead.

  The second figure was a young man in his midtwenties, broad-faced with thick shoulders and a short neck, wearing a faded blue baseball hat. He wasn’t from the village. Reve wanted to ask what was his business, coming down here to talk to Mi, because he didn’t seem like the people who came to her meetings. He seemed too easy in himself. Most people were a little anxious round Mi, had questions. He wasn’t like that. There was something different about Mi as well, Reve thought. She sat straighter somehow, held her head differently, looked older. The young man had been before, that was obvious.

  The man pushed his cap a little further back on his head. He had tight black curly hair and eyes that studied Reve in a level, unblinking way. He smiled. ‘You know how to handle that skiff you got.’

  ‘Learn from Tomas the Boxer. Been sailin’ almost since I could walk. You know Tomas?’

  The man nodded. ‘Know most everyone who takes a boat out on this strip of sea.’

  ‘Then you must know a lot of people,’ said Rev
e. He turned to his sister. ‘Hey, Mi. I brought you this.’ He handed her the fish. He always brought her something. Sometimes she cleaned, cooked and ate them; sometimes she left them out on the sand and the birds picked them clean. This one she gutted and cleaned straight away, put it in a tub of fresh, cool seawater. Then she set a fire and pulled out her grilling tray. Was she going to go cooking for this man? Reve wondered. Was she going to lay out a cloth and find him a box to sit on? What was this man to her?

  ‘Always share the catch?’ said the man.

  Reve nodded.

  ‘I like to see family sharing what they got.’ The man’s voice came out soft and light, not as you’d expect from someone so solid-looking. Reve noticed how his eyes followed Mi all the time.

  ‘I’m out here most times,’ said Reve. Mi came and sat down by them under the tree. ‘Someone got to look out for my sister, livin out here in this old car she got. You tell this man ’bout the boys?’

  The man smiled. ‘I reckon no one mess with this girl – she getting a name. People sayin she see what comin. That right, Mi?’

  She tipped her head down like she was bein shy, but Reve saw the way she looked up at this man, liking him. She looked so pretty. He frowned and looked away towards her car with its strange little garden she had made: long shadows stretched across the sand from the different sticks and scraps she had planted there. Somehow it made the garden look as if it was moving, pointing inland towards the setting sun.

  ‘She’s not always right,’ said Reve. ‘Yesterday she was talking ’bout a storm coming down.’

  Mi scowled at him.

  The man said, ‘Well, if she said that, I’d keep my eye on the sky. Weather can change quick enough, and no man wants to lose a boat.’

  Mi shrugged. ‘I feel it in my bones. Don’t mind what Reve say; he don’t see nothin till it smack him in the face.’

  The man laughed and then Mi and him talked a little longer while Reve sat silent, just listening and thinking. A couple of times Mi gave Reve a look which said plain as a black cloud in a blue sky that she wanted him out of there, but he pretended not to notice. Then the man stood up and took his leave. ‘I got to head back, but I would like to come to one of your meetings. Maybe you’d think of holding one in San Jerro.’